


восемьдесят

by ashilrak



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Bucky thinks about emotions, Bucky's POV, Gen, Stream of Consciousness, Vague, and Steve - Freeform, and old people, introspective, lots about steve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-12
Updated: 2014-10-12
Packaged: 2018-02-20 22:59:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2446286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashilrak/pseuds/ashilrak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Jealousy. Sadness. Anger.</p><p>They all faded away so quickly. He had never felt emotions as strongly as people might have expected; not like Steve. Steve was always quick to light, and the fire would stay burning strong. It could be anything, a simple angry remark from him meant  so much, for the anger never truly went away. </p><p>It was always wondrous, in his eyes, how Steve’s tiny body could hold so much. So much passion for life, for everyone’s life.</p><p>He had never had that ability to care, not really. Sure, he loved his family, and he held affections for the girls he kept around. But it never ran deep enough, not in comparison to Steve."</p>
            </blockquote>





	восемьдесят

Things were different now, unsurprisingly.

The world continued to spin on, just as it always has. The expected life span in the United States was just under eighty years. He can remember eighty years seeming like such a long time - anyone who lived that long was seen as ancient in his eyes. 

That was over eighty years ago.

Now he looks at someone who’s lived to eighty and feels a wealth of emotions, jealousy being the first that comes to mind.

He can’t remember when he was born. The Smithsonian exhibit says 1917. He googled it once, and the captain america wiki said 1925. 

One or both of them is wrong.

He almost asked Steve, mentally prepared himself for a week beforehand - Steve always looked so hopeful when he asked him anything, and he didn’t know how to deal with seeing his face fall every time.

They had been sitting in the kitchen, eating breakfast, having what could almost be called an conversation. It didn’t last very long. The conversation was unusually normal, Steve was talking about a woman he had seen while jogging, and then he had to go and ruin it.

He didn’t even get the answer to his question. He had decided as the words were coming out of his mouth that asking where he was born was less pathetic than asking when. He was wrong. But he now knows that he was born in Indiana, and later moved to Brooklyn. 

History books always describe him and Steve as brooklyn born and raised. They were wrong, apparently.

He didn’t know how to react the first time he read section on his and Steve’s life in a history book, he didn’t know how to react to anything anymore, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that reading those words made him think about all the kids who read, or didn’t read, it while in school. The many teachers who no doubt made them memorize it to the point where it was the only thing they could talk about for a week.

All those kids, living normal lives with normal parents. Parents whose grandparents were just about his age, chronologically speaking. He was jealous of those grandparents. The people who got to live out their lives in full, got to see their children’s children have children. 

They had a life, and they made some good in their lives.

He was jealous.

He didn’t know how to deal with jealousy. The Winter Soldier was never equipped to deal with such a trivial emotion, and according to Steve, jealousy wasn’t even a word in James Barnes’ vocabulary.

He knew Steve felt the same way, though. He saw it in the was his blue eyes caught on large families, or elderly couples strolling in the park. The same elderly couples who saw them as young men in their prime with nothing to lose and everything to gain.

How wrong they were.

He sees those couples, he stares at them right back. Most people that old have lost most of their shame. They have no problem staring. Neither does he. 

And he’s never the one who looks away first.

It makes him sad. To know that these people who see him as an insolent youth, weren’t even born when he was fighting on the front lines. Before he fell of that train, before Hydra got their hands on him, before he forgot, that’s the real pain.

Every life has difficulties, some more than others. But those people, with their wrinkled skin and judgemental glares - they’re the ones who thought they knew it all, thought they knew what it was like to look on to what was happening around them and be lost; thought they knew what it was like to yearn for a simpler time.

They knew nothing.

It didn’t only make him sad, it made him angry.

What did it say about him, his life, that he yearned for a time he can’t even remember. A time where they could barely afford to stay off the street and he was in constant fear of his best friend breathing his last breath in any given moment.

At the time he had privately thought of it as hell. What had he done to deserve that, when there were people who were born into luxury, and those same people made it their mission to step all over those they viewed as beneath them.

He knew nothing.

He would go off to fight a war he didn’t want. He thought he learned something from that. He didn’t. He still knew nothing. He looks back on his fellow soldiers, what short glimpses into his own past he can remember. They all thought it was the worse it could get. So few wanted to be there in the first place, and those that did quickly changed their mind.

How could he have been so wrong.

Jealousy. Sadness. Anger.

They all faded away so quickly. He had never felt emotions as strongly as people might have expected; not like Steve. Steve was always quick to light, and the fire would stay burning strong. It could be anything, a simple angry remark from him meant so much, for the anger never truly went away. 

It was always wondrous, in his eyes, how Steve’s tiny body could hold so much. So much passion for life, for everyone’s life.

He had never had that ability to care, not really. Sure, he loved his family, and he held affections for the girls he kept around. But it never ran deep enough, not in comparison to Steve. 

He used to think that if he stayed healthy for Steve, Steve would stay happy for him.

He quickly realized that wasn’t the case, but that didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that Steve was okay. As long as his heart kept beating, all was well in the world. His emotions had always been shallow, and he’d never been one for grudges.

But Steve was his only exception.

Even now, sitting alone on his still made bed, feeling hollow, Steve still meant something. Steve meant more than the elderly, whose glares made him yearn for a simpler life. He meant more than his own life, as proven by how little regret he still felt for standing up to protect Steve, even when it meant him falling to what would've been his death, but turned out to be something much worse.

He might not know his name, and he might not be sure about his birthdate, but he can tell you this. He’s sure about one thing, and that thing is Steve.

He might not be able to talk to him, or about him. Or anyone, really. But that jealousy and anger he felt? It wasn’t directed at anyone in particular, and it faded so very fast. He wasn’t jealous of the people who got to live their life, he’s jealous of the ones who got to do it with the ones they loved. He’s angry at those who don’t appreciate the gift they’ve been granted.

But those emotions fade fast.

For as terrible as his life had been, despite the fact that he’s not one hundred percent sure he ever lived, or will live, to see eighty. He knows that right now, he’s biologically thirty one years old, and Steve is there.

Maybe not close enough to touch, but always on the edge of his consciousness. Close enough to know that he’s real, and this isn’t some dream or other hallucination.

He still feels hollow, but it’s not longer cold.

Steve always seemed to be running a temperature when he was younger, and now his normal temperature is always above average.

He had been frozen for so many years, emotionally frosted much before he was literally put in the freezer.

But now it was different.

It was painful, and it was difficult, and every day was a chore, but it was no longer static; no longer cold.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is Russian for "Eighty"


End file.
